When Bill Murray started his career in retail security, he would pull out his binoculars to watch thieves.

Now he can pull out an iPad, call up a video of a cashier and see the register's transaction. The receipt shows those diapers were voided, but the video shows the customer put them in her cart.

"In 30 seconds, you've got 'em," Murray said.

Murray is president of StoreVision, a Montgomery County company that provides anti-theft services to retailers in the Mid-Atlantic.

The kinds of losses that Murray tries to stop, known as "shrink" in retail, amounted to 1.5 percent of retail sales in the U.S., according to the 2012-2013 Global Retail Theft Barometer. That includes shoplifting, employee or supplier fraud and organized retail crime.

Cutting those losses means a lot for retailers, especially those with tight profit margins.

"That's big money back on the bottom line that helps retailers survive and stay in business," said Gene Smith, president of The Loss Prevention Foundation, a group that educates and certifies retail loss-prevention and asset-protection professionals.

In the last decade, loss prevention has moved from law enforcement and reacting to thefts to investigating internal operations, making retailers safer and saving money. Armed with sophisticated cameras, software and cloud-based archives, auditors can pinpoint a theft and recognize trends. As loss-prevention professionals become part of management teams, they're expanding their scope to site selection, logistics, business strategy and investments.

Instead of sorting through a room filled with VHS tapes, store management can play back a video from last month on a smartphone and match that with sales from the register. An auditor can ask for a batch of transactions, such as voided transactions, and watch to see if an item was returned.

Loss-prevention professionals can look at operations as well and find mistakes made by computer software, counterfeit merchandise that's being returned and review leases to realize savings.

Murray, a Wyomissing resident, started his career in law enforcement, then moved to security at Pathmark in the greater Philadelphia area. He liked the analytical work, such as reviewing written statements to find lies.

Murray spent time with the Redner's loss-prevention program, then started his own workers compensation investigation business before being recruited back into retail at ShopRite stores in the Philadelphia area. Through his career, the scope of the industry grew as security became "loss prevention" and then moved on to "profit retention."

Murray moved on to a company making commercial-grade digital store controls for StoreVision Holdings. When the owners of the Iceland company went bankrupt in 2009 in the midst of that country's financial crisis, he bought the company with co-worker Barry Katz.

The company owed money to employees; the business partners bought the company for $7,000. As they make StoreVision North America their own, they have become the international distributor for the Store Control system and the newer IPOS system.

The Bridgeport company now provides loss-prevention services to dozens of grocery stores, including Wakefern, ShopRite, PriceRite and Gristede along the East Coast.

StoreVision has watched over the ShopRite of Passaic/Clifton in northern New Jersey for the past six years. The company installed a security system and cameras in the store. Store managers conduct weekly audits with a store loss-prevention manager to find savings, said store President and CEO Rafael Cuellar.

The computer systems allow managers and loss-prevention auditors to see videos on their own computers or smartphones.

"Our overall shrink number is 40 percent less than the average," he said.

In one store, Murray launched an in-depth audit and in five weeks found more than 30 clerks were stealing.

The savings can add up, but some retailers still focus more on reacting, not investigating internal controls and errors, Smith said.

"If you have 10 robberies, it's easy to add up the costs of those and ask for money to prevent them," he said.

It's harder to justify spending for prevention, but that could prevent a security breach, like the recent one at Target, Smith said.

"One of the things that your good companies have learned over the years is that you lose anywhere from 6 to 16 to 1 in operational deficiencies than you do to theft," Murray said. "So your biggest losses are not to theft."

He recently completed a U.S. Small Business Administration Emerging Leaders initiative, a six-month course for executives.

The SBA program helped Murray focus what he knew and helped him apply his knowledge into his business, which had $420,000 in sales in 2013.

Now he plans to bring the point-of-sale video technology to monitor public benefits, like food stamps. The audit centers could be monitored by disabled veterans.

"You're talking about creating a program that reduces costs," Murray said. "The jobs that you're creating are going to disabled veterans, and it's not costing the taxpayer a dime. Businesses do this because they save and make money, and their expenses are more than covered."